Musical Wanderer

After walking past the National Guard standing around local Metro Stations for the past year, I thought it might be worth looking at why particular states sent troops to the Washington, DC, a first without a civil war, insurrection, or burning city to justify such deployments.  Actually it comes down to numbers (or should I say money), not merely the blind obedience of Republican politicians to Trump.  Below are two charts, the first comparing the states with Republican governors (states which have had 100+ troops deployed here are shaded in green) with the monthly median individual income of each state (Only states which have sent over 100 troops here are shaded.  Others have sent a token dozen or two over the past year to demonstrate their fealty.). The second compares the states with Republican governors with the percentage of the states' K-12 education budget made up of federal funds (again, states which have deployed 100+ troops are shaded in green).  As can be ...

  Fireworks seen from Capitol Hill, 2021 Today is our country's 250th anniversary.  We will celebrate it as we have for years, with the Capitol Hill 4th of July Parade sometimes led off by our local marching band followed by, most probably, a late breakfast at Mr. Henry's.  We will probably take a pass on tonight's fireworks--they're sorta late, it's hot, and fireworks are great for a little while but they get dull after a while.  I can imagine folks on the mall tonight taking pictures with their phones of the fireworks for the first fifteen minutes and then reading their phones for the remainder of the display (it will get smoky, as the air in DC stops moving beginning around June 21st and doesn't start moving again until about September 3rd.). I believe the day is a celebration of both the central truth of the United States, that all men are created equal, and the central trial of the United States, the challenge of living up to our central truth.  That is th...

  I had an interesting find at Capitol Hill Books a couple months ago, This is London by Edward R. Murrow.  It's a set of transcriptions of his radio broadcasts from, um, London in the early days of the Second World War.  His broadcasts created a picture of the war in Britain for listeners in the US.  The tales of the commonplace courage and fortitude of the British people in the face of German bombing helped to build sympathy among Americans prone to isolationism for the fight against Fascism in Europe that the United States would eventually join. It's hard in the US of 2026 to appreciate the place Edward R. Murrow had in American journalism and culture in the middle of the twentieth century.  Today people watch, listen to, and even sometimes read journalism or what passes for it of their own curated taste.  They have splintered choices of right-wing, left-wing, and satiric voices on multiple mediums to confirm their world view and satisfy their biases....

Part of the fun of living in our neighborhood is the curbside sharing of, well, almost everything.  Lamps, books, shoulder bags, hats, dishes, glasses, bookshelves, furniture--anything that people don't need anymore is left out by the sidewalk for someone else to make use of.  Inevitably most of it is snapped up.  We have a fair number of odds and ends that we ran across and have found useful.  We found a somewhat rusty bird-feeder a couple months ago and repurposed it, after removing the plastic feed tube and adding a plastic bird skeleton and a red light, as a Halloween decoration. Most of the stuff on the street are household items with likely no story for previous owners except their former utility, though someone left a nice HO train set on the street after Christmas last year, probably after their kids got bored of it.  I found the small framed picture above on the street today.  I picked it up not to reuse the frame--though I have found some good pic...

  I've watched Richard Linklater's Blue Moon several times, enjoying it and being tortured by it more with every viewing.  The tale of Lorenz Hart's evening at Sardi's on the night Oklahoma! premiered on Broadway will not be noted as one of the best movies of our time or even the year, but it is already a favorite of mine, for assorted reasons.   WARNING:  Do not read on if you have not watched the movie yet.  Dripping with spoilers. First off, the dialogue is funny, frequently laugh out loud funny.  Hart says a Jewish producer "circumcised" his Jewish name to Anglicize it (changing one's Jewish name was common in the past when anti-semitism was common in the US).  Hart promises Elizabeth he will introduce her to Richard Rogers, saying she will soon have her hands full of dick, also betraying his hopes for the evening.  E.B. White notes a young woman goes from being ineffable to unF-able.  Much of it is sparkling word-play and discussi...